Friday, January 8

Frank and Josephine.

My grandmother and grandfather. This photo wasn't labeled in the album but based on the other photos, I am guessing it is c.1938 in San Francisco. And it is perhaps my favorite thing in the whole album. A photo booth strip! Of my grandparents! In 1938! I love it.

The whole album is really incredible. My grandfather loved to take pictures, much in the same way that I do or so I am guessing from the shots in the album. He seemed to like to document things, take lots of photos of his wife and friends and play around with light. I have no idea what type of camera he was using in the 1930's. The pictures are all quite small, maybe from a Brownie? I'm slowly scanning the album and I'll be posting all the shots on Flickr and some here too.

My grandfather was a geologist and worked for the government his whole life. He took photos of the Golden Gate Bridge while it was being built! And he worked on the Hoover Dam project as well. We also came across slides of an atomic test explosion, but I don't have those to scan. (On the same note, when my dad was a boy scout in Nevada, his troop went on a field trip to watch one of the tests. Crazy.) It's all fascinating to me and I wish he was still around so I could talk to him about all these things. He died in 1979 when I was nine years old. At that age, I was more interested in his collection of magnets than asking him about the different cameras he used. That's just how it goes sometimes. My love of vintage cameras and photography makes me feel a little connection with him though. Perhaps he grins when he sees me taking Polaroids of myself in the mirror just like he did.